


Riddles in the Dark

by itstonedme



Series: The Hobbit Chapter Title series [5]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1353211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itstonedme/pseuds/itstonedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of <i>The Hobbit Chapter Title</i> series.   Martin must decide if what he thinks he hears is what he thinks happened, and if what he thinks happened is really what happened.   Set during principal photography of <i>The Hobbit</i> in NZ.  First posted on LJ <a href="http://itstonedme.livejournal.com/98167.html">here</a>.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: Fiction.  No disrespect meant to any actual persons.</p>
<p>Feedback: Always appreciated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riddles in the Dark

Martin could Skype Amanda. It would certainly save on his exponential phone bill. Problem is, she'll ask him why he's turned off the video. And he doesn't have the heart to tell the love of his life that sometimes, when he's done for the day, he's done with being camera-ready, even for her. Call him old-fashioned, but it's her phone voice he needs. Having her Skype face would just remind him of all her other lovely parts that he can't have right now, and that's just depressing.

Besides, when he's lounging in pajamas buttoned all higgledy-piggledy, she'll focus on that instead of what he wants her to focus on, which is his considerable need for some tender commiseration. 

He turns off the lamp by the chair so that the distant, delicious sound of her will be that much closer. "I miss you, my love," he says when he rings her.

"I miss you too, my love," she chirps at the other end. It's coming on 6:30 in the morning London-time, and she's all perky and chipper. She has always been a morning person. Martin figures she probably already has a fruit loaf cooling on a rack nearby. He doesn't doubt that she's also been to the gym and memorized most of her lines for the coming day. 

"I miss the kids," he adds.

"They miss you too."

"I wish you were here."

"I wish I were too, my sunshine boy. What's got you so glum tonight?"

"Well," Martin says, intentionally putting a little puzzlement in his tone. "I thought I'd made that clear. I miss you."

She laughs, that tiny, frightfully smart tinkle of delight that HE MISSES SO MUCH. "We'll be there in four short weeks," she says brightly. "Then you'll have your brood safely within its nest, and you and I can fluff our feathers and fuck."

"Oooo," he grimaces. "You had to mention that word. I've been trying so hard not to think about it." As an after-thought he adds, "Can the kids hear you?" 

"If they can, it's about time they learned what the old folks get up to. No, they're still in bed."

Martin nods to show her that he's not surprised. But of course, she can't see that because he couldn't be arsed to Skype. 

"Are you that lonely?" she asks sympathetically. "You now have Benedict with you. Surely, that has helped."

Martin unfolds from the cramped tuck he's twisted himself into in the arm chair. "Benedict isn't quite what I need, my love. Have you been listening?"

"Well," she says, and he can tell she's doing something like icing the loaf or finding her downward dog because he can hear the movement in her voice. "Perhaps you might give it a try until I get back."

He has fully unfolded now. In fact, he's sitting on the edge of the chair. _"What?"_

"I'm sure he'd be accommodating," she says cheerily. "He's always been most fond of your happiness. And you know what they say about a change and a rest."

"Benedict," Martin says pointedly, "appears to be changing and resting quite comfortably without any interference from my quarter."

This gets her attention. "Oh, do tell!"

"It's the oddest thing," Martin confides, settling back into the cushions and oh, how he's missed not having her to cuddle up with for a good gossip at the end of the day. "Straight, not gay, completely heterosexual Benedict has been making eyes at Richard."

Amanda doesn't say anything.

"Are you listening?" Martin asks.

"Give me a minute," she says. "I'm imagining what that might look like."

"I'm serious!" he says loudly.

"Just a minute," she says. "I'm nearly done."

Martin sighs. "I don't understand this fascination, Amanda. I truly don't."

"You're not meant to, dear," she smiles. 

But of course, he can't be sure of that grin because he didn't bloody bother to Skype. 

*

Benedict is outside his trailer, hands pressed high against the side of it as if he means to push it over when in actual fact, he's attempting to stretch the hamstring up the back of each leg. 

"Going for a jog?" Richard says, walking by with Martin at his side. Richard looks at the evening sky. "Seems a little late in the day."

"Stretching out my loathsome dragon tail," Benedict utters, head hanging between his shoulders as he focuses on the muscle burn.

"Ah, you've been tied up all day," Richard quips, and Benedict punctuates his discomfort with a nod.

Martin flaps the script sheets in his hand as a visual reminder to Richard that they have lines to run because he can see it coming…

"Need me to give you a bit of a rub?" Richard asks. 

Benedict angles his head and squints directly at him, hands still on the wall. He's amazingly at a loss for words.

"Ask Martin," Richard says chummily. "Tell him," he says, nudging Martin's arm. "Tell Benedict about the wonders of my hands."

Very Baggins-like, Martin cocks his head and peers off into space, rotates half a turn, looks back, frowning which he figures is utterly appropriate given the idiocy of Richard's obvious flirtation. He looks up sharply, all smiles. "As a masseur, he is exemplary."

He's beginning to feel like the reluctant matchmaker of this relationship.

Benedict pushes off the wall and turns to Richard. "Seriously, you wouldn't mind?"

Martin turns away again so that he can roll his eyes in peace.

"Can I catch up with you?" Richard says to Martin, which pretty well signals to the matchmaker that he can bugger off. "I'll swing by in a bit. Yours, right?"

Martin nods smartly, gives his script pages a flap for good measure and smiles at both of them. He has not failed to notice that his comrade-in-arms, his good friend, straight-not-gay Benedict, has tilted his head in apologetic appreciation of Martin bending his plans to accommodate Benedict's very obvious physical need. 

Martin heads to the car park, parting words out of the way, the trailer door closing behind him. Fight it as he tries, he can well imagine which of Smaug's tails is due for a rubbing.

*

His key doesn't make it into the ignition. Why this is, he can't really say except for a niggling curiosity, the source of which he places directly on Amanda, heart of his heart. How dare she tell him he was not meant to understand the appeal of the Richard-Benedict convergence! She knows how he responds to red capes waved in his face (except it was his ears, wasn't it, damn that Skype). Because now, he wants to know. 

Correction. Now he _needs_ to know. 

He sits there in the dark of his car, the overhead electrics spilling across the lot, tap-tap-tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, thoughts churning. He doesn’t get any of it, not the man-sex, not his wife's vicarious enjoyment, not the surprising sense of rejection he feels over the fallacy he'd entertained that Richard might have been interested in him even though he is irrevocably off limits. That's not the point. Truly, what does Benedict have that he doesn't, except a bit of height? Maybe Richard doesn't like to bend for a kiss. Not that Martin would know because he hasn't exactly mailed out an invitation.

As for Benedict, well, that's another matter. Not only has Benedict betrayed heterosexual mankind, he's left his partner in crime – literally – hanging out to dry. Martin hasn't felt this way since middle school.

*

He awakens with a jerk. Damn, but he's nodded off right here in the driver's seat and it's night outside. He angles his watch and sees it hasn't been long, maybe half an hour. He can see Benedict's trailer across the several hundred meters of pavement in a dark corner of the lot near the siding. There had been a light on somewhere inside when he first got in the car, but it is not on now. Damn again, has he missed them leaving? He could call Benedict or Richard, or text. He could.

But he won't. Because a little shut-eye hasn't kept the niggle from growing. He gets out of his car.

How can it be, he wonders, that a sound stage car park as large as the one at Peter's Stone Street Studio can be virtually unpopulated at this hour? It seems that everyone is indoors toiling like hive bees because the office windows are all brightly lit. Not even the smokers are at large.

He walks towards the trailer, out of the light haloes and into the dark. He could go to the trailer door, see if it's locked, but he doesn’t. Too logical. Too lacking in stealth. He slips around the back, between the car park siding and the trailer, directly below the canopied back window. It's too dark to tell if it's opened, so he closes his eyes and listens. All he hears is the hum of tires from the roadway beyond the property wall. 

He slips around to the front of the trailer and up the steps. He tries the handle, expecting to find no give but lo, there is. He twists the knob, opens the door and burgles inside, closing it silently behind him. 

He can tell they're not in the makeup lounge he's stepped into. So much for preparing the excuse that he forgot to tell either one of them this, that or the other. He immediately hears low voices coming from the bedroom at the back of the trailer, and now he knows he's where he shouldn't be. He should leave. There's no congenial massage going on in the neutrality of the lounge as Richard delivered to him in his own trailer, with lights on, might he add. No, this seems decidedly congenial in another way altogether. He looks back to the door and is about to reach blindly for the handle when the niggle genie reminds him of his purpose.

He hears a groan coming down the hallway from the bedroom, followed by Benedict's low voice. He can't make out the words, but he recognizes the pitch and cadence. Whatever is said, it's received by a pleasant deep-throated chuckle from Richard.

Martin's hand stops. Didn't he moan and groan himself when Richard worked a particularly knotted muscle group? He's sure he did. What he has just heard sounded like two mates _not_ mating, actually, only having a chat. He pulls his hand back from the door knob.

Martin knows his eyes aren't anywhere near as good as theirs are right now. Peering down the length of the trailer towards the opened door of the bedroom, all he sees is a splotchy, swirling void. But sitting (laying, kneeling?) in the dark as they might be, he could appear to them like a deer in the headlights, for all he knows. Maybe he should quit breathing just to be safe. 

It doesn't take very long for his eyes to adjust, and he's actually shocked by how much he can see in the limited bleed of light coming from various portals and electronic devices. The bedroom is still pretty much a void, but the saving grace of that realization is that he's equally masked in the dark of the entry way. And his ears seem to have sharpened now that his eyes don't have to work so hard.

"You're tight," he hears Richard say. Martin frowns. He needs Amanda here to interpret.

"Just give it a minute," Benedict replies. 

If Martin knows anyone's voice, he knows that one, and there's a decided bite to the tone, as if under duress. He really, really hopes they are discussing quadriceps.

"That's it, yeah," Richard says. Was that a sigh?

"Oh," Benedict replies, except it sounds like air escaping out of a tire, long and low and slow.

That's it, Martin thinks, too much information, time to go. If they are doing what he now thinks they are doing, there's no genie on the planet that is going to keep him in this trailer. The movie reel playing against the back of his eyelids might cheer up Amanda, but those are his mates in there, and he needs to rewind their video and get back to regular programming. He finds the door knob and exits as quietly as he entered. 

*

"Is he gone?" Benedict asks, grinning as he comes into the lounge from the bedroom, where Richard is peering through the edge of the window blind to the parking lot. It's the same window they had used to see if Martin had driven off when they'd first come into the trailer.

"Just getting into his car," Richard chuckles. "Do you think he's bi-curious?"

"I think he's jealous," Benedict smiles, coming up behind Richard and resting his chin on Richard's shoulder so that he can watch as well, "although I haven't quite figured out of whom." 

They track as the headlights come on and the car pulls away. Then Benedict straightens up and walks to the door, slipping the lock. He pulls his jersey over his head, and tosses it on the couch.

"I think there's more to it," Richard says, stepping away from the window so that he blocks Benedict's path as he returns from the door. He reaches out and settles his hands on Benedict's hips. "I think he's a watcher."

Their faces come together, followed immediately by their lips and tongues. "I have to hand it to him, spying on us," Benedict breathes as Richard's mouth slides to his neck. "Very un-Martin of him."

"That's why he'd make a good watcher," Richards says against the skin there. 

"It's a thought," Benedict concedes, eyes closing, and then he concedes all over again.


End file.
